Let's Make A Doll Deal: Tawdry Trades At The Stauf Estate
by Quillon42
Summary: Takes the climactic end scene from PC game The Eleventh Hour (The 11th Hour), and imagines what might have happened if Carl Denning had chosen Marie Wiley but could somehow survive thereafter...with help from some dolls that are not so much mystical as egotistical on the part of this pretty unlikeable protagonist of the story.
1. Chapter 1

LET'S MAKE A DOLL DEAL: TAWDRY TRADES AT THE STAUF ESTATE

CHAPTER THE FIRST

By Quillon42

Someone with a chary heart and hexagonal chin like Carl Denning could only withstand so much that the remains of a malevolent mansion such as this could level at him. Only so many intimations at inbreeding could the addled anchorperson take, only so many cracks about cognitive capacity coming exclusively from cue cards. He'd meticulously lined beans up to beat the house just now, thank the flying spaghetti monsters of modern media, and now he was skulking with dread deliberation toward the shades-shrieking suite of Hamilton Temple, where he now had an inkling that some denouement to all these grating games would take place at last and such herein.

Apart from the predictable portable guillotine with which a magician's guest quarters would sport, there had only been the ordinary hospitality effects and standard disembodied inflections infesting the room. Carl clutched at the utterly unscalable crags of his jowls and considered all that had transpired up to now. More than a dozen puzzles pushing at the man, so taking him for an ignoramus when in fact there were smarts and savvy involved with reaching as far as he had in his career; as such, he was not the nebbish Neanderthal that this stuffy Stauf had taken him for, and there was some weight behind his own cult of personality besides that the shock-chateau's patron would very soon ken in fact.

None of the previous challenges herein, though, from the crass cash register to the traumatic toy train to the infinitude of infernal infection head-to-heads, none of that could prepare this most talented of televisory toolboxes anyway for the weighty choice that he would have to work out now.

"Volunteer State Starlet?"

Such whimsical words cropped up once again on the crude predecessor to a portable computer that was within the crook of the man's arm at the moment. He stared at the staid jade lettering, the emotionless female intonation behind the device offering nothing this time in the way of any kind of guidance. Carl absently wished for an instant that the machine possessed the voice of the vixen invalid who created it; even though he'd only spoken with the ravishing and resourceful Samantha Ford once just now on the stairs, he'd found her inflection to be rather enticing.

Carl approached the choice like a cultured reader of Mandarin, he proceeding from right to left in his perspicacious perusal of the pickings. Despite the fact that Stauf had attempted to stymie the pseudojournalist with this dilemma among dames, it would take mere instants for Denning to divine which woman was warranted for choosing.

Now the un-abstemious anchor so considered the third door first, and all those wild wayward weekends he had spent with Robin Morales. The resolutions he'd erected before meeting her, the rules he broke while with her. Yet there she stood before him as of now, she once more preying upon his pity, just as she did back at the restaurant they always haunted so jauntily. It was that sort of woefulness which the woman would let waft through the airspace between them, which had motivated the man to jump onto his tacky bike and trek here to Bumfuck-On-The-Hudson in a seemingly halfhearted bid to save her. It wasn't really desire that moved Carl to come here; the natty newsman just felt bad for being a nasty asshole to Robin the time he saw her last, and his lackadaisical lurch into the Stauf Estate herein was just the Douchy Denning's way of showing he still at least remotely gave a scintilla of a shit about her.

Then there was the middle portal, the one occupied almost entirely by the imposing screen upon which was placed the supposed face of this fool's salvation. Only Samantha Ford for whatever reason seemed to harbor arbitrarily the answers and the resolve to resist the agenda of the aged estate. Completely not mooching off the modus operandi of at least the first entry in the _Hellraiser_ franchise with all this, the underlying narrative indicated that the indoors evil required constantly to thrive upon homo sapien takeout delivered upon its doorstep by dedicated acolytes. Greed, Lust, and other such vices afforded the abode an opening upon which to operate, as it seemingly provided mortals' basest desires in exchange for sustenance via human souls. That was how it all worked, from Henry himself all the way to Robin most recently, but Samantha had known better.

For all that the lovely looking lout that was Carl Denning had known, though, his destiny indeed lay behind the first threshold herein. There had been the most irresistible of all Gender XXers that this Generation Xer could possibly encounter and embrace. Certainly his will had succumbed to that of Miss Marie Wiley from the moment he had placed his peepers in a perspective focusing upon her fantastic fandango-fleshed figure. Really it didn't take teleprompting from a lurid and overly lipsticked mastermind such as Herr Stauf to convince the Chad that this sultry Stacy named Marie was where it was at regarding the fulfillment of all of his desires; as such the choice would become so much more than crystal for Carl.

Thusly positioned before the poser now were the three women, each framed within a decomposing doorway, each in her own unique resting configuration between sitting, sort of streaming (in a kind of para-scientific sense), and standing respectively. Lo, what a relatively modern day Judgment of Paris this would prove to be, to elect between a lamia of lust, a stranger of straightedge, and a woman who was a producer of pity (in more ways than one).

Again, though…within the next several instants the hunky hero would hesitate not but rather rout Robin and snub Samantha by making for Marie.

All too eager was the puzzle-plowing putz as he hulked past the other two pouty pains in his plastically-sculpted ass. Just seconds ahead was the scarlet score Carl had been waiting to clinch since the advent of his adolescence. Forsooth, who needed some vegetable of bole bangs like Frau Ford, or Senorita Schnoz like his producer Robin (who was the literal nose for news should you ask a cad like Carl), when one could go all in for a glamorous ginger like this wildest of Wileys after all.

It would be many ticks past both hands upon the twelve as of now, that the ostensible adventurer of the airwaves would enter the readied bedchamber like, well, some kind of untoward stalker to be honest really. Yet Marie did not seem to mind his presence in the least as it were.

Hungrily the man happened upon the woman, the two of them commencing to coalesce in the crudest, least prudent method of prurience. Heretofore the harlot was draped in swatches of the swarthiest black, the fabrics lending themselves to the fallacy of falling into the most pernicious sort of temptation. These onyx effects the seeming hero relieved from the ravishing one now as she in turn took her place upon his most steadfast pedestal, she hovering above with her brash burgeoning beryl breasts blooming out into the decadent airspace between them. Soon her coquelicot stomach would undulate coquettishly into his face, her navel silently calling for his tongue to tread within, her burgundy-tinged body beckoning this brute of broadcasting to take her just as that Flowbee-follicled fuck Chuck Lynch had only hours earlier.

While a smile was spread across the kisser of the idiot underneath the nymph, the latter would soon find herself leering with a sneer of misunderstanding in turn.

"…

"You…

"I can't turn…

"…Why can't I stuff you with Stauf…"

"It's the bobbles, baby."

Then Carl spread his left arm wide so that the woman could bear witness to all of the freakish figures that were adorning the side of the bed now.

More powerful, plentiful, and perilous than any possible plastic humanoid child that the hoary horror Henry could devise himself were the dapper doppelgangers of Denning himself, each bedecked in differing duds that reflected his swanky status as a tawdry television personality. In utter, unsettling unison now the heads nodded, they forming a silent chorus which reticently set the libido-launching Marie into a near panic. Within the woman her inner incubus quailed to be loosed so that this chump Carl could be cut down to kibbles…but the bobbles abounding forbade it, held the hussy fast to the mattress so that she could not do so much as even cry out in the precarious predicament in which she was so very presently placed.

Such was the control that a cult of personality could maintain over not only individuals in a milieu more material, but a plateau more paranormal additionally.

A most prudishly prudent of bony hands shook pedantically in front of the framboise figure of Marie Wiley now, all from the perspective of the prat through whose lewd visage the viewer had borne witness to all the supernatural scandal thus far. Yea, the cryptic carpals so cautioned Carl against copulation without consent, as to engage in such would render the ruffian reporter no better than the unidentified entity which lunched on locals and impregnated intruders such as the freewheeling Ford and the unfortunate Eileen Wiley as well. This did not indicate that the diabolical Denning could not partake in the most gratuitous of gazes upon the magnificent cerise presence of the temptress before him, though, and the alleged protagonist helped himself as such to a most famished gander upon the dread grandiosity that was the domestic demigoddess in fact.

Seemingly immeasurable were the infinite lengths of the talcum-soft thighs coursing across the crest of the bedspread. Eminently nommable in fact was the enticing exposed crème of her vanilla velvet belly. Forbidden to anyone who sought to retain sanity were the Kilimanjaro-challenging chambers of her considerable silken knockers. Clutchable to the cost of one's soul indeed were the grandfather-clock-accessible secret galleries of her alpaca-smooth ass. Desirable to the juncture of one's impending madness was the thrusting out into the ether of the camelhair cache existing between her winsome hips. Turning to stone for sure would be anyone who beheld the beauty of her vicuna-fleece visage, insofar as any viewer would become that stiffened by the symmetrical sensuality of her flawless features. It was all Carl could do to ever maintain any semblance of composure when looking upon the inescapable lamia that was Marie as of now.

Yet there was in fact a separate presence which mediated between the entities that were the prevailing evil at the Stauf residence and the countervailing arrogance advanced by the cunning Denning. As it were, and as had also been heralded by the bizarre clue above upon Carl's proto-chromebook, there existed an essence inside of Marie which had in fact bestowed the very Christian name upon the irresistible sylph of this haunted homestead, one which had precedence from the first jaunt in which a Tad of a protagonist had ushered out the ominousness from the estate decades preceding. Behind all of those scores of years separating that obscured earlier chapter from the present time, there was an actress with auburn tresses who wanted so badly to be a star that she would so shed her very soul to become the same.

And now this same maiden who would mug for the marquee (by any method she could) was making to wrest the very soul from Carl, primarily for purpose of feeding the awful entity that was this house at large, ulteriorly for the advancement of her own ambition even beyond the span of what was supposed to be her allotted time upon this Earth. Murderously Martine (whose soul existed within Marie just like the latter's own handle was contained within that of the former, thus enabling the anagram "MARIE TN" for Miss Burden's first name in the computer's clue), now she/they clawed for the groin of the guy who made so many mistresses their careers in the past, she seeking rather cozy collateral in that which inhabited the codpiece that the co-anchor had sported on a regular basis on his news beat. To be certain, it was almost a success on part of the sangria succubus, she nearly ripping out at very roots the reckoning rod of the reckless heartbreaker; however, as it turned out, there were more than few trite totems which the man had maintained to guard moorings most unmentionable.

Beyond the bobbles in fact were beanies and plushies of the punter that put the best designs of the Henry from Heck to shame. For certain the fucker even had funkos made in his very own image, to upstage the visages of those hinky little humanoids made from cloth and wood which the Faustian head of this wayward household had so foisted upon the populace more than half a century prior. All of these synthetic semblances of the magnificent moron himself had indeed now shielded Carl from his soul being crushed and his figure fed to the occult organism that operated within the bounds of these ever so grave grounds, and surely the dubious dude would be more than willing to sacrifice the same if it meant his own purchase from the unctuous instant underpinnings which sought to convert him from man on the street to the main serving of the evening currently.

It would be several beats later, in fact, that Carl would actually culminate his non-pantry non-crypt tryst with Marie. Through so many thrustings and graspings and climaxings between the lusty couple, the man would fuck the malevolent Martine right out of Marie to the point that Eileen Wiley's daughter would follow him right out of the horrible house and into the fresh arms of freedom in the world without. Though Henry Stauf wished to steal Denning's soul and body through the corny yet deathly _Let's Make A Real Deal_ show he had set up, it would be the himbo hero who would be commandeering the trade under this rotten roof, given that he would leave behind the spiritual wards of the bobbles, beanies, and plushies in his own likeness to cover the escape of himself as well as the doll who was his new bride, she very beautiful if also rather baleful.

In the end regarding the erstwhile evil estate of Stauf, its undoing would arrive not through the computer-keyboard-hammering machinations of a handicapped harridan, nor through the literally wil(e)y duplicitousness of a mademoiselle made up in obsidian and otherwise flush in the flesh; rather, it was the canniness of a less than competent news camera whore who would persevere through the problematic property (one which was once so much more suave and sophisticated but after so many dilapidating decades had become too jazzily tacky to subsist any further). Now said handsome ho Carl booked from the front yard with Marie, he much sated in his libido, the landscape behind him not burning but rather breathing out its final gasps. Mercy was what the hellish home honestly felt in its final seconds anyway: very pleased was the place, given that it had at least expelled its most obnoxious occupant to enter its foyer.


	2. Chapter 2

LET'S MAKE A DOLL DEAL: TAWDRY TRADES AT THE STAUF ESTATE

CHAPTER THE SECOND

By Quillon42

(Inspired by Saturday Night Live Season 25 "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" Will Ferrell Sketch

(You can see the same on Ferrell's own personal Youtube channel if you like and all))

Again this author urges the reader to imagine the illustrious imbecile that is Carl Denning, he before the Stauf-Satanic trinity of thresholds once more and compelled to make a choice that would affect the futures of this intrepid stunad as well as those of the others involved in the occult outing. Now said haughty Henry to this randiest ruffian of ratings, as the latter looked upon the offerings before him as tentatively clutched at the cache of cash in his overeager hands, this just after the valiant one gave two C Notes over to the villain in fact:

"Opening Door Number Two as of now, Carl, and we see that we have a Big Screen TV! Now, you can take this TV, as well as the four hundred dollars I've given to you all in hand, or you can…"

"Yes, I think that'll be good!"

"…

"Wh…What, Carl?"

"I'm done for today's show, honestly! I'll just take my television and my winnings otherwise."

An utterly, viciously vacant expression etched upon the countenance of the cruel count of the corrupt casa.

"But but but you _can't…_"

"It was one of your alleged deals on here; I'm just gonna load up this fifty-five-incher up onto my hog and be on my way."

And with that, the hunky homunculus of a human set upon lifting the monitor before him now.

All the incubi and other entities could only hover by agape as they witnessed this most daring of dipshits making off not only with his soul (as they so wished to consume) but with their best TV to boot.

"COME BAAAAAAAAAACK!" cried the redhead after the hero, as if the latter were a child in 1994 diving back into DOSland after a first stint in the Stauf house, the crimson siren screaming basically to the very back of the boorish moron in fact as of now. All of the clutching and thrusting and galloping and grasping and saladtossing and climaxing that this titian temptress could possibly offer could not begin to retrieve the attention, much less devotion, of the brave and burly churl.

Such spirits were not the only opposition to the courtesy-averse protagonist either. Ever archly the prying and perpetually-seated Samantha piped up in the bounds of the credit-card-sized LCD which the dauntless Denning had still been toting as he trundled his winnings down the primary staircase of what was now a regal ramshackle.

"You really can't leave now; that foul fool's entirely afraid of you, and he'll do anything he can to retain his hold over this house and everyone in Whatever-The-Eff-On-The-Hudson and such! Honestly, he's all on the ropes and all you need to do…"

"…is just tell you to shut the fuck up, sister!" Carl cut in, he holding the interfering thingamajig up to the dashing dodecahedron of his features now.

"…Or should I say really, shut the fuck _down._"

Flustered with all these interferences both terrifying and technological, Carl skipped the CPU down the stairs like a stone across the most serene lake, the machine not coming to any kind of rest upon the entrance area's floor but rather becoming flushed down the tile toilet of the foyer fresco that once led Tad to the evilest of art expositions some sixty years previously. Satisfied with his haul as well as his hurl, the hero now made for the front door, he battering through the arcane pattern of wooden slats most intrepidly with his idiot box.

He knew it was all worth the journey to this forbidding frontier regarding the prize he just so smugly pilfered. So much hassle with customer service and wearying warranties and all of that, when he could just snag a supernatural set as that which Stauf had stuffed up in his house. Carl paid for the means of his future entertainment through all of his trouble; of course, he knew there was no such thing as a free lunch, after all. Now he just took the TV and his trusty bike and slid them on up into the back of that bleach white van that he managed to track down on the way here to the Hudson as well, the one in which that pesky petite PC had arrived at his doorstep the day prior; then he took off without looking or even thinking back to the house behind him. When all was said and done, it really wouldn't be any traumatic challenge to find another girlfriend; what it took to get a good plasma set, though, on the other hand these days and all really…

…

…

…

Up in the $10,000-per-month (even in 1995 dollars and such) apartment loft Samantha had maintained, she undoubtedly sustaining her standard of living through that settlement reached with a _literally fucking house_ that assaulted her…the video-monitoring vegetable kept on chattering upon her keyboard, she concatenating continuously and chatteringly upon the device like a tweeking squirrel fiending for acorns laced with cocaine. Somewhere else there had to be another chosen one, another asshole airhead who could suffer a sabbatical from delivering doomful local news so that he could harrow that horrific home on the Hudson and broker eternal salvation upon the American East Coast. All she would need was another Texas Instruments Speak N' Solve as she had slipped to that dastardly douche Denning and then she could start again with another assiduous schmuck as needed.


End file.
